Selected Abstracts

Amenities Drive Urban Growth

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 5 2002Terry Nichols Clark
Studies of the city traditionally posit a division between a city's economy and its culture, with culture subordinate in explanatory power to work.
However, post,industrial and globalizing trends are dramatically elevating the importance of culture.
Cultural activities are increasingly crucial to urban economic vitality.
Models to explain the growth of cities from the era of industrial manufacturing are outmoded.
Citizens in the postindustrial city increasingly make quality of life demands, treating their own urban location as if tourists, emphasizing aesthetic concerns.
These practices impact considerations about the proper nature of amenities that post,industrial cities can sustain.
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WAL-MART, LEISURE, AND CULTURE

CONTEMPORARY ECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 4 2009ART CARDEN
This essay contributes to the debate about the alleged spillover effects associated with Wal-Mart's growth.
Combining county-level data on Wal-Mart entry and location from 1985 through 1998 with individual-level data on leisure activities, we estimate a positive relationship between Wal-Mart penetration and participation in activities involving inputs that can be bought at Wal-Mart.
The relationship between Wal-Mart penetration and activities that do not involve inputs that can be bought at Wal-Mart is negative in most cases but may be positive or zero for "cultural" activities such as attending classical music concerts and visiting art galleries.
The evidence is consistent with the thesis that deeper Wal-Mart penetration expands consumption possibilities.(JELA13, D00, C12, Z11, Z13)
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The Creation and Management of Cultural Clusters

CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2002Erik Hitters
This paper analyses two cultural clusters, the Westergasfabriek (WGF) in Amsterdam and the Witte de Withstraat (WdW) in Rotterdam, and evaluates their contrasting creative management strategies.
The WGF has to date been fairly successful in creating an attractive mix of different cultural activities, based on the creative potential of the buildings on the site, its image as a cultural centre and the general atmosphere of creativity.
The more ,top,down' approach of the Local Authority owned but commercially managed WFG has injected new commercial skills and investment into the cluster, and creates the conditions for innovation through managing the mix of creative functions.
The WdW, on the other hand, takes a more ,bottom,up' approach to the problems of cultural management, and so far the participants have resisted the imposition of formal management.
This may allow cultural and commercial functions to co,exist more easily, but, thus far, there seems to be less evidence of innovation.
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Archaeological site distribution by geomorphic setting in the southern lower Cuyahoga River Valley, northeastern Ohio: Initial observations from a GIS database

Seeking the Truth, Spiritual and Political: Japanese American Community Building through Engaged Ethnic Buddhism

PEACE & CHANGE, Issue 1 2010Masumi Izumi
This essay documents the history of the Senshin Buddhist Temple in South Central Los Angeles, a Japanese American temple belonging to the Jodo Shinshu (True Pure Land) School.
In the United States, ethnic Buddhists are generally perceived as socially conservative and politically passive, while convert Buddhists are known to be active in peace movements and social activism.
The essay analyzes the reforms Senshin members introduced to the temple's religious rituals and elucidates the development of new cultural activities and art forms, which not only contributed to the emergence of vernacular ethnic art and music, but also to the construction of a community of socially engaged Japanese American Buddhists.
By opening their temple to members of local minority communities, Senshin Buddhists formed artistic and political coalitions with other peoples of color, harboring subaltern cultural activism, which transgressed national, racial, and religious borders, and defied hegemonic racial, gender, and class hierarchies.
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Becoming a Hurdler: How Learning Settings Afford Identities

ANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2009Na'ilah Suad Nasir
In this article, we present a model for thinking about how learning settings provide resources for the development of the practice-linked identities of participants, drawing on data from a study on an African American high school track and field team.
What does it mean to make an identity available in the context of a learning setting?
In this article, we draw on current theories in anthropology, psychology, sociology, and sociocultural theory to develop a conceptual frame that might be helpful in addressing these questions.
We focus on how individuals are offered (and how they take up) identities in cultural activities.
We define three types of identity resources that were made available to student-athletes learning to run track and explore how they took shape in teaching and learning interactions in track.,[identity, learning, African American students, culture]
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Searching for the ,Popular' and the ,Art' of Popular Art

PHILOSOPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 3 2007Theodore Gracyk
Philosophy of art presupposes differences between art and other cultural activity.
Philosophers have recently paid more attention to this excluded activity, particularly to the range of cultural production known as popular art.
Three issues have dominated these discussions.
First, there is debate about the basis of the distinction.
Some philosophers contend that fine art is essentially different from popular art, but others hold that the distinction is entirely social in origin.
Second, philosophers disagree on the degree of continuity or discontinuity that holds between fine and popular art.
Third, there is controversy about the relative value of the two, and about the basis for the supposed superiority of fine art.
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